Here is an inter­view I gave to Eric Kar­jalu­oto from idea­sonideas. You can read it below.

EK: Thanks for join­ing us today Erik. At smash­LAB we’ve often admired your work. Need­less to say, we’re happy that you are join­ing us for this lit­tle inter­view. I have cer­tainly strug­gled with the some­times diver­gent demands of run­ning a design stu­dio and work­ing within it, and I believe that many of our read­ers have likely expe­ri­enced the same. As such I’d be inter­ested to hear about what you’ve learned, and how you run Spiek­er­man­nPart­ners.
It strikes me that you truly love design. As such, I won­der why you invest so much time in a busi­ness. Wouldn’t it be more enjoy­able to down­size, hire a cou­ple of assis­tants and have more time to do the work itself?
ES: I tried that when I left MetaDe­sign in 2000. But clients either thought I was still with that com­pany 5 years later, or they thought I was too expen­sive for smaller projects, or they didn’t want to insult me by offer­ing small projects. I would have been very happy design­ing book cov­ers and other small stuff in an office with 2 or 3 peo­ple. But soon after I set up on my own with Susanna, my wife, I got enquiries from big com­pa­nies again and had to hire other design­ers…
 
EK: Some describe me as a worka­holic. When my wife and I moved in together this cre­ated some chal­lenges. You seem to always be work­ing and rarely are in one place for any length of time. (The other day I noticed that you post your itin­er­ary in your email sig­na­ture.) In light of these demands, how do you make time for those you love? Addi­tion­ally, do you have any tips for those strug­gling to man­age their time bet­ter?
ES: I have a bad his­tory of neglect­ing my pri­vate life. One of the main rea­sons my first wife divorced me was the fact that busi­ness always took prece­dence over any­thing else. I have often had to leave her and my son in the mid­dle of a vaca­tion and go to see a client. In the end, I didn’t even have vaca­tions any­more. Today I actu­ally can­celled a trip to Korea to see the com­plete senior man­age­ment of a big client there because my son and my grand­son will be vis­it­ing me dur­ing that week. This is the first time I’ve ever done that, and we may lose the con­tract.
 
EK: Your firm has groups work­ing in dif­fer­ent loca­tions across the globe, which would seem dif­fi­cult to man­age. Can you tell me a lit­tle about the how you track projects? Do you employ any soft­ware or project man­age­ment sys­tems that make this eas­ier?
ES: We have a pretty good extranet and very effi­cient servers. We can log onto our VPN from any­where with a fast con­nec­tion and work off the servers. But it still needs peo­ple con­tact, both with clients and amongst each other. That’s why I travel so much.
 
EK: Bud­gets seem like a uni­ver­sally dif­fi­cult topic for design­ers. I believe that the (often inac­cu­rate) per­cep­tion of design as “close to art” makes us squea­mish when talk­ing about money. If a com­pany came to you need­ing a cor­po­rate iden­tity sys­tem and web­site, what kind of ball­park bud­gets could they expect to find?
ES: Any­thing from 60k to 500k. If I write a pro­posal, clients will argue money with me, using that “artist” argu­ment. So I get all the pro­pos­als writ­ten by project man­agers, and they get away with 30% more than I would. Amaz­ing.
 
EK: What mis­takes did you make at MetaDe­sign and how have they shaped how you run Spiek­er­man­nPart­ners?
ES: Too many to count. I cer­tainly gave too much power to my new part­ners who had no expe­ri­ence in the busi­ness. I also didn’t always com­mu­ni­cate what I was doing, why I was away so much or why a cer­tain con­fer­ence or pre­sen­ta­tion was impor­tant. In the end, they thought all I did was look after my hob­bies. Now that I’m gone, Meta sur­vives mainly because it’s a big brand. Maybe some peo­ple have finally under­stood what it takes to build a big design brand.
 
EK: The last time I checked, your firm was at 40 mem­bers and grow­ing. How do you ensure the qual­ity of work remains con­sis­tent? Addi­tion­ally, how much “Erik Spiek­er­mann” do clients get when they hire Spiek­er­man­nPart­ners?
ES: We’re not quite that many, but almost. Clients get my ini­tial input and my involve­ment all the time. I am very quick to under­stand the issues and I am also pretty good about del­e­gat­ing the design work after we have iden­ti­fied the way to go. I look at all the pre­sen­ta­tion, and I usu­ally present the most impor­tant phases myself. But the main thing is to hire good peo­ple who are bet­ter at some things than I am. And you have to under­stand that del­e­gat­ing means giv­ing up. You can­not let a team work on a project for weeks with­out ever see­ing what they’re up to and then, at the end, tell them that their work sucks. My for­mer part­ner used to do that, and in the end, nobody wanted to work with her any­more.
 
EK: How do you illus­trate the value of Spiek­er­man­nPart­ners design solu­tions to clients? Or, does your recog­ni­tion in the com­mu­nity allow you to tap into a client-base that is already aware of such value?
ES: No. You always have to tell the same story. Espe­cially when you won’t do pitches. We never do unpaid cre­ative work, but some­times it takes more time and trou­ble to con­vince them than to do the work. But it’s a prin­ci­ple. We often have clients come back after they ini­tially hired some­body else, because they were cheaper or did a free pitch. In the end we know that our approach is bet­ter for the client, but they need to find out for them­selves some­times.
 
EK: You direct a rel­a­tively large design firm. With such an orga­ni­za­tion, the burn-rate on cash often forces prin­ci­pals to look for more lucra­tive work to sus­tain the firm’s health. Which clients do you find to be the most prof­itable to work with? How do you prospect such groups?
ES: Big, long-term projects are best because you get up to speed with it and start mak­ing economies of scale. They are bor­ing, but good cash cows. You also need small, inter­est­ing projects to keep the design­ers hun­gry, even if they lose money. A bal­ance is impor­tant.
 
EK: Pro­fes­sional ser­vices firms are usu­ally chal­lenged by the para­dox of bill­able hours. Often, the design solu­tion has a dis­pro­por­tion­ately great value com­pared to the time worked. As such, some agen­cies have pro­posed the notion of “licens­ing” ideas. Do you still bill on the hour, or do you have an alter­nate method of charg­ing for your ser­vices?
ES: We always stick to our pro­pos­als which are based on time spent. If we take too long, we lose, if we take less time, we win. We do make licens­ing deals for exclu­sive type­faces, and we have some jobs with big­ger clients that are entirely charged on an hourly basis, but only after a long rela­tion­ship, where they know they can trust you. Clients can have access to our extranet and the time-sheets if they demand it.
 
EK: Many firms ref­er­ence indus­try ero­sion, lim­ited bud­gets, dif­fi­cult client rela­tion­ships, and a myr­iad of other issues as obsta­cles to strong design solu­tions. What do you feel stands in the way of your firm doing even bet­ter work?
ES: Young, know-all MBAs who avoid risk because they don’t want to endan­ger their career prospects. In the end, they do endan­ger their careers by becom­ing totally inter­change­able.
 
EK: Often it seems that strong design­ers find dif­fi­culty in direct­ing oth­ers. Are you a good man­ager? What lessons have you learned about this aspect of your busi­ness?
ES: I am good at inspir­ing other design­ers. I am not very good at the daily aspects of run­ning a busi­ness. That’s why I have other peo­ple who do that for me. I’m best when I impro­vise, which makes it dif­fi­cult for our peo­ple some­times to work with me. I’m a Gem­ini and Ger­man: always on time, but some­times a year late.
 
EK: Aside from the obvi­ous rea­sons, such as port­fo­lio and past expe­ri­ence, what do you look for in the design­ers you hire? Is there a par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter­is­tic that you find in those who excel at Spiek­er­man­nPart­ners?
ES: Atti­tude. Curios­ity. And at least one skill that is par­tic­u­lar to that per­son.
 
EK: What is the cul­ture at Spiek­er­man­nPart­ners? How do you main­tain this spirit as the orga­ni­za­tion grows?
ES: Leave peo­ple to do what they do best. And pro­vide the best espresso machine in the street, the fastest servers in the busi­ness and the most com­fort­able chairs.
 
EK: What aspects of your per­son­al­ity are lia­bil­i­ties to your busi­ness? How do you over­come these weak­nesses?
ES: I tend to lose inter­est quickly. My bore­dom thresh­old keeps going lower over the years. And I’m not really inter­ested in money. Clients sense that. I also can hardly ever say no. Not to inter­views, pre­sen­ta­tions, lec­tures, big projects, favours, time-wasters, pub­lic duties, free­bie projects.
 
EK: Does the “busi­ness” aspect of your prac­tice enhance or dimin­ish your capa­bil­i­ties as a designer?
ES: With­out it, I wouldn’t be around as a designer. I started a few busi­nesses (like MetaDe­sign and FontShop), and they’ve all been suc­cess­full. You also have to design a busi­ness, and that process is very much like work­ing for client projects.
 
EK: Do you employ oth­ers with strong tra­di­tional busi­ness skills to help plan and man­age the growth of Spiek­er­man­nPart­ners? If so, can you tell us a lit­tle about the roles they fill and what you gain from these rela­tion­ships?
ES: We have a free­lance con­troller, 2 project man­agers and an office man­ager. They look after pro­pos­als, the day-to-day run­ning of the busi­ness, our effi­ciency. I still tell them what equip­ment we’ll buy and who we should hire and when.
 
EK: You are highly regarded in the design com­mu­nity, which is quite nice to see given how prag­matic your work is. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you rely on sen­sa­tion­al­ism or shenani­gans to build your rep­u­ta­tion. How­ever, does all of this press and atten­tion result in more – or bet­ter – work for you and your firm?
ES: Not really. Clients are hardly ever part of our design scene. But it makes me feel good being liked by most of my peers. I have many friends in the busi­ness, and we see each other more as col­leagues than as com­pe­ti­tion. I need that moral sup­port.
 
EK: Thanks once again for the inter­view. In clos­ing, are there any last thoughts that you might like to share? Or, do you have any sug­ges­tions for design­ers con­sid­er­ing start­ing their own firm?
ES: Just the usual: do what you’re good at and avoid what you’re not good at. Don’t talk about stuff you do not know about. Even harm­less clients will have a bull­shit detec­tor and know when you’re out of your depths. Travel and learn. And ask when­ever you don’t know some­thing. It is my great­est fear to die stupid.